Selena Gomez Opens Up About Why She’s Been MIA Lately

Samantha Speisman

She may be young, beautiful and in love, but the last 12 months or so haven’t been a walk in the park for singer Selena Gomez.

Sometimes you need more than me-time

Selena Gomez —who’s very happy with Canadian boyfriend Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a., The Weekend, if you must know — cancelled the remaining dates of her world tour last October to focus on her emotional health.

Opening up to InStyle, the 25-year-old singer says she went away for 90 days, and that, “it was best thing I could have ever done.”

Selena Gomez Mental Health

Gomez realized something was off with her emotional well-being when she stopped caring about everything that she used to care about. That’s when she pulled the plug on her tour and checked herself into a retreat in the countryside.

She pressed reset, which she says changed everything, “I had no phone, nothing, and I was scared. But it was amazing, and I learned a lot. I was in the countryside and never did my hair.” She also took part in equine therapy, which she describes as “so beautiful.”

Now that Gomez is back in the spotlight (and reunited with her glam squad), she’s keeping those lessons close to her heart and doing her best to make sure she doesn’t get to that point of emotional distress and exhaustion again. She regularly sees a therapist to help her work through the issues that often come from being a childhood star (fyi: she doesn’t recommend the career choice) and the pressure she faces being the most-followed star on Instagram.

You wouldn’t think a star that’s beloved by millions around the world would have the same insecurities as other twentysomethings — but she does. She says that overcoming her insecurities is what she works on most in therapy, and recently wrote that she “finally fought the fight of not being enough.”

We may not all be Selena Gomez, but hopefully that’s a fight we can all learn to win.

Read more about how to take care of your mental health with these stories: